Army Bob: Are all corporations and advertising bad?

by Robert M. Traxler

Most good folks have worked for a corporation in their lives. Most folks have purchased an item advertised in one of the many advertising sources in their lives. Both are despicable, vile institutions, that pollute, oppress and degrade human beings.

A good question is what corporation or advertising entity has caused the national obsession with illegal drugs? Now our friends on the left will blame the doctors and the hospitals we go to for life saving care for the opioid epidemic. I disagree because it would be very difficult for over prescription to feed the 20,000,000 opioid addicts in America.

A Mexican drug smuggler apprehended in New York with enough Fentanyl to kill 10,000,000 people, per the New York Times, attests to that market being filled mostly by imported illegal drugs. No American doctor or American corporation or advertisement produced all of the billions of dollars’ worth of illegal drugs and made us use them.

A bit of history — The American national government had effectively banned the use of all mind-altering substances by the time of the Volstead Act (1919) prohibition, but Americans weren’t having it. Millions ignored the new anti-alcohol laws and drug laws, and black markets were quickly created to supply people with alcohol, heroin, cocaine and marijuana.

Prohibition caused initial shortages that had the effect of dramatically boosting drug prices; the law of supply and demand is absolute. The super-profits to be made ensured not only the survival of the black market, but also that new suppliers would always fill the demand. Mexico’s proximity to the United States made it an easy source and traffickers rushed to supply their neighbor with illicit narcotics and alcohol. Exports of Mexican opium, heroin and marijuana for U.S. consumption steadily increased because of Prohibition;

Americans wanted drugs and alcohol, and didn’t give a damn who supplied them.

The Mexican economy is itself addicted to drug money. The indirect benefit of the drug industry is that it fuels the economy, more than even oil exports. Mexico’s economic future is dependent on drugs, estimated in a CNN report to be 29 billion U.S. dollars in 2016, as more people are servicing those who work in the drug industry and working directly in that industry.

I am not blaming Mexico that it is currently the drug center of the world, but if not Mexico it would be Colombia once again, or other countries. The fact is that drugs are so profitable it will always be a major factor in our country and others, economic reality, again the law of supply and demand is absolute.

Now we must ask what wicked, evil, disgusting advertising agency made good folks use billions worth of illegal drugs totally against their free will every year? As many of our friends on the left demonize corporations and advertising, they seem to forget or dismiss the corporate success and what must be the advertising success of the illegal drugs industry. If all evil springs from the loins of corporations and advertising, I must have missed the illegal drug ads.

An argument can be made that the entertainment industry is the advertising entity responsibility for the sale of billions worth of drugs, but how can that be? Hollywood and the music industry are exempt from being criticized by most of the American left; they are very left of center in message and example.

Please note I did not say all or every movie or song, however most send a positive recreational drug use message. As we read the writings of the anti-capitalist folks, they are against things like product placement in movies. Not much in the way of objecting to glamorizing cocaine or marijuana, the two leading illegal drugs in movies.

Is the left against the environmental groups that advertise? Got to wonder if the corporations that are the sacred cows of the left (the ACLU INC, Sierra Club INC, DNC, Starbucks, etc.) are also evil? Corporations that make solar and wind power generating devices are evil as well?

A liberal is a conservative who has yet to be mugged by reality.